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Welcome to After Silence - A message board and chat room for rape, sexual assault, and sexual abuse survivors.

Welcome to After Silence, a message board and chat room designed to help survivors communicate in the recovery of rape, sexual abuse, sexual assault, and all types of sexual violence.

After Silence has over 30 different forums, ranging from topics created to discuss specific areas of healing and recovery from rape and sexual violence, as well as forums open to general discussions and lighter topics. Because we value the privacy of our members, most of our forums are private, which means that ONLY REGISTERED members have access to them. Please register for a free account to gain full access to the After Silence Online Support Group.

Invalidation. Words Can Hurt!

some people say things and it just hits you harder than you expect it too...

"Well why did you even go over to his place?"cause we broke up a week prior and he threatened to kill himself if I didn't come get my stuff out of his apartment...what would you have done?

After I got him expelled from his senior year of college..."Have you thought about how you ruined his life? He was so close to student teaching and graduating"Ummm...excuse you...HE chose to ruin his life...NOT me!

I think the worst comment I've gotten so far was from a "friend" (that I now regret telling... he was one of only three people I've told about it) about my gang rape in Germany:

"Well you have to look at it this way. You CHOSE to go to Frankfurt that night. You had more control than you think."

Oh yes... I chose to travel to another city from Berlin, so that must mean I also chose to have sex with 4 strangers at once at 3 am in an empty parking lot. And I had so much control being one, 5 foot tall, 110 lb female against 4 male police officers. Ugh.

This is one that I just encountered the other day from my new therapist. Now I've been really struggling due to the fact that my r@pist recently contacted me after 12 years. Mine was a date r@pe and he must have seen my face on Facebook...that's all I can think of. Anyway, it was triggering anxiety in me...the thought that he can find me...just google me and find where I work..etc. etc. So I've just been hypervigilant and a little scared that I'm being stalked by him. So my therapist just says, "Your thought process is irrational. Why would he come to your work? It's not like it was a violent drag-you-down-a-dark-alley-in-the-middle-of-the-night r@pe." I thought to myself...way to minimize what happened, you idiot. He still overpowered me...he still took a piece of me. Just because I wasn't (too violently) abused should make no difference. How about validating my fears and helping me work through????? I'm ticked off to say the least.

People are usually stupid. They cant get it, they are mostly retarded. I emailed my uncle with admitting about abuse, he visits us every day and for 5 months didnt say a word. all i can do now is LOL. because he is super stupid. once i realized they are unimportant and retarded, i deal with invalidation better. I dont seek it anymore. My mother is also stupid and will never get it, my sister is denying abuse and living her pathetic FAKE social climbing life - she is pathetic, i pitty her. they are nobody important.

i made many friends who got it and had nice response to it and appreciate that. even some who said "dont use abuse as excuse not to get better", it didnt piss me, that's their opinion they have right to it, i dont emotionally depend on their response.

The only "friend" I trusted for a long time violated my privacy with details related to the incident, spreading them to someone else (probably using them as a prop in some cattiness towards me) and tried to apologize a year later with the excuse of "I couldn't see you as being hurt". because I always kept my composure before this, I guess.

and then, as if this genuinely explained everything, told me "I couldn't see you as being human".

I know it's not much compared to a lot of the previous replies from people in this thread, but I've spent the last year feeling inferior to everyone, like some ghost of a person, and every time I think about this response, it hurts more. I'm human. I'm human. Why can't I deserve the same decency as anybody else?